A dessert featuring glogg, a Scandanavian mulled wine, will be featured at an Oct. 22 dinner at Trillium restaurant in Denver’s Ballpark neighborhood. (Courtesy Trillium)

OK, maybe you can’t make it to New York City in November to see Trillium chef Ryan Leinonen cook a dinner at the iconic James Beard House. But you can get a sneak preview of that meal during a six-course dinner he’s hosting Oct. 22 at his Ballpark neighborhood restaurant.

The dinner features six courses with paired wines, starting with an hors d’oeuvres reception. The fun starts at 6:30 p.m. and costs $100 per person. Yes, reservations are required: 303-379-9759 if you’re interested. You can check out the restaurant (2134 Larimer St.) at its website at trilliumdenver.com.

This isn’t Leinonen’s first trip to the Beard House, named after the famed food writer. Ten years ago when he was a sous chef at The Kitchen in Boulder, he made the trip with exec chef Hugo Matheson to Manhattan to help with Matheson’s dinner.

“Cooking at the Beard House is a rare honor, and while I’ve been there before, it’s different this time because I get to defend the art of cooking by preparing my own rendition of Nordic cuisine,” Leinonen says.

New Flood wine that will launch Oct. 15 at fundraiser for Colorado floods.(Provided by Doug Brown)

The floods that devastated Colorado last year inspired three wine professionals in Boulder to create a new wine called Flood, a tribute to the community spirit that manifested between neighbors and strangers working to rebuild their towns and lives. They’ll launch the new wine on Wednesday, Oct. 15, with a wine tasting and silent auction at the Boulder Wine Merchant as a fundraiser for Jamestown, which faces a long rebuilding challenge.

“We’re all cyclists, and we’ve all been in Jamestown many times,” said Matthew Cain, founder of Derailleur Wines, a wine importer and consultancy that works with exclusive wineries in California, France, Spain and Italy. “It was heavily impacted, and still continues to be affected.”

The cyclists, all with long careers in the wine business, decided to combine their different skills to create Flood.

Brett Zimmerman, a master sommelier, has the palate and a retail shop, the Boulder Wine Merchant. Craig Lewis owns Stelvio Selections, a wine distributor in Boulder that relies on a team of experts that include master sommeliers like Bobby Stuckey, Richard Betts, and Matt Zimmerman. And Cain has experience at importing and brand building.

The first bottling, White Label, includes a Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. All Flood grapes are grown in Santa Barbara, Calif.

In January, Flood will release a second bottling, Black Label, an exclusive Pinot Noir. Made by acclaimed winemaker Sashi Moorman, it draws grapes from four different sites: Bent Rock, Rita’s Crown, Mount Carmel, and Wenzlau. Twenty-five percent of the wine is whole-cluster fermented, with the aging done in older French oak barrels.

For each bottle of wine sold at the wine tasting, $5 will go to Jamestown flood relief, and all of the silent auction proceeds will be sent to the efforts to rebuild the town.

Flood, available now at the Boulder Wine Merchant, will soon be available across the country.

Chef Matt Selby concocted a five-course meal to celebrate the end of Colorado’s peach season, each dish featuring the fruit somewhere within. The dinner begins, however, with a tasting of bourbon from Garrison Brothers Distillery, out of Hye, Texas.

Distillery co-founder Charlie Garrison will be on-hand to guide the tasting and chat about the Brothers’ history and techniques. A Garrison Brothers cocktail accompanies the amuse bouche course, too.

Cured, the Boulder cheese shop, is offering special cheese-and-beverage pairings during the Tour de France. (Photo by Brett Wilhelm)

You might not have the stamina for the Tour de France, but you can probably muster the wherewithal to get through the Cured de France, a cheese-and-beverage pairings offered by Cured, the popular cheese emporium in Boulder.

The three-year-old shop (1825 Pearl St., 720-389-8096) has assembled a package that celebrates each region the race passes through, from its first July 5-7 leg in England (Leeds, Harrogate, York, Sheffield, Cambridge), to the subsequent Gallic stages when the competition jumps the Channel into France. The world’s most prestigious bicycle race ends July 27 in Paris.

Why the Cured de France? Because Will Frischkorn, who co-owns the shop with his wife, Carol, is a former pro cyclist who has ridden in the Tour de France. Each package comes with a generous chunk of cheese and a paired drink. Price ranges from $25-$50, depending on the stage. The entire bundled “tour” costs $295, and you can arrange to have the packages delivered.

For the tour’s English leg, Cured is offering the legendary Montgomery cheddar and Robinson’s Old Tom Ale, a classic English ale with enough power to hold up to the sharp cheese.

“At the finale, we guiltily enjoy Champagne and wedge of Fougerus while the riders finally get off their bikes,” Frischkorn said in an email.

Information: 720-389-8096 or email answers@curedboulder.com. The shop’s website is at curedboulder.com.

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Jay Christianson, Canyon Wind Wine Cellars, PalisadeWinner of best red wine and best of show for the 2012 Petit Verdot, Grand Valley AVA, $29.95On prizes: My father [Canyon Wind founder Norman Christianson] had a tremendous amount of contempt for awards because of the repeatability challenge, so I didn’t focus on that, I focused on the winemaking. But we have realized they really do matter.On the winemaker’s role: We’re not big on that we’re in charge of the wines. It’s more about knowing what you’re growing and when you pick and how you pick. We are totally estate so we have total control over the process. Wine is a lot like building or architecture — no matter what, you have to have an understanding of carpentry. But past that, there can be a tremendous amount of art behind the final product, as long as you follow the rules.On the growing popularity of Colorado wines: Now, I think that there are a lot of people in the gatekeeper positions — wine buyers, sommeliers — who weren’t here five, six and 10 years ago, and they are looking at Colorado wine with a hugely open mind.
On the next challenge: I do think the Colorado fruit aspect is incredibly important. We could improve by sourcing more fruit in Colorado. That’s a tough one on all sides. The best thing that we can say about the industry is there is a history of tremendously talented wine people in Colorado, and now they are making wine here as opposed to Napa.

Carlton McCoy, wine director at The Little Nell in Aspen, attended the James Beard Awards in New York City, where his hotel was nominated for Outstanding Wine Program. (Photo courtesy Annie Brown)

OK, so The Little Nell in Aspen didn’t win the title of Outstanding Wine Program during Monday night’s James Beard Foundation awards in New York City. That didn’t stop Carlton McCoy, the Nell’s wine director and a master sommelier, from enjoying the evening.

“The energy in the room was just incredible — it was exciting and really cool,” McCoy said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, following a lunch that he conceded, laughing, “went on a bit longer than I expected.” Woo-hoo.

McCoy and The Little Nell rubbed corks with some elite company in their category. Nominees included A16 in San Francisco, Bar Boulud in Manhattan, FIG in Charleston, S.C., and The Barn at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn. The latter, located in the Great Smoky Mountains, won.

Laurie Forster, “The Stand-Up Sommelier,” has performed her wine/comedy act at clubs around the U.S. (Photo from TheWineCoach.com)

Laurie Forster, the self-described “Stand-up Sommelier,” kicked off her “Something to Wine About” stand-up comedy and wine show last week with a request that everyone don name tags.

Writing your “wine name” on the adhesive tag (your favorite alcoholic beverage + mother’s maiden name, similar to your “porn name”) was meant to break the ice — as all jokes, crowd work and introductions at public events are. But it immediately set a corny, pseudo-slick tone from which the night never recovered.

Forster, the host of the WBAL radio show “The Sipping Point,” certainly knows her wine. A spin through her website or the videos from her numerous TV appearances show her to be a passionate, engaged lover of grapes whose mission is to demystify wine for the masses.

But that was only occasionally clear on Thursday night at the wood-paneled Highland bar Local 46, where dozens of places were set for the $40-per-ticket attendees. The prices of admission for her touring show included four wine samples, a precious supply of snacks and the promise of hilarity.

Combining wine education with stand-up comedy was an ambitious goal, and one that drew a curious, capacity crowd. But both subjects suffered in the awkward attempt.

Old Major is going “Coloradical” on April 20 with a Sunday dinner featuring five Mile High chefs, plus Colorado brews and wines. Tickets are $75 and available at eventbee.com. Twenty percent of the proceeds will be donated to Metropolitan State University of Denver and No Kid Hungry Colorado.

The biggest overlap between stand-up comedy and wine used to the fact that comedy clubs offered cheapo glasses of the stuff to help patrons fill their nightly two-drink minimums.

But Laurie Forster, the self-described “Stand-Up Sommelier,” uses comedy to demystify the world of wine.

The host of the WBAL radio show “The Sipping Point” is touring the country with her “Drink Your Glass Off Tour” — including a Thursday, April 10 show in Denver.

Forster’s “Something to Wine About” show is a combination of stand-up comedy, wine tasting, games and improvisation, according to a press release. And while this reporter has always been suspicious of stand-up that needs props or theatrical trappings to get its point across, he also appreciates the value of a couple stiff drinks at a comedy show.